{"id":12936,"date":"2024-10-30T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-30T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/?p=12936"},"modified":"2024-10-07T08:33:48","modified_gmt":"2024-10-07T08:33:48","slug":"data-centre-emissions-are-soaring-its-ai-or-the-climate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/data-centre-emissions-are-soaring-its-ai-or-the-climate\/","title":{"rendered":"Data centre emissions are soaring \u2013 it\u2019s AI or the climate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n\n Jack Marley<\/a>, The Conversation<\/a><\/em><\/span>\n\n

Artificial intelligence (AI) is curating your social media feed and giving you directions to the train station. It\u2019s also throwing the fossil fuel industry a lifeline.<\/p>\n\n

Three of the biggest tech companies, Microsoft<\/a>, Google<\/a> and Meta<\/a>, have reported ballooning greenhouse gas emissions since 2020. Data centres packed with servers running AI programs day and night are largely to blame.<\/p>\n\n

AI models consume a lot of electricity, and the World Economic Forum estimated<\/a> in April that the computer power dedicated to AI is doubling every 100 days. Powering this boom in the US, where many AI tech pioneers are based, have been revitalised gas power plants once slated for closure<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

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\n \"Imagine\n
\n <\/span>\n \n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\n

This roundup of The Conversation\u2019s climate coverage comes from our award-winning<\/a> weekly climate action newsletter<\/a>.<\/strong> Every Wednesday, The Conversation\u2019s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 35,000+ readers who\u2019ve subscribed.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n

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First, what actually is AI? <\/p>\n\n

AI sucks (power and water)<\/h2>\n\n

\u201cAt its core, the kind of AI we are seeing in consumer products today identifies patterns,\u201d say Sandra Peter and Kai Riemer, computing experts at the University of Sydney.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cUnlike traditional coding, where developers explicitly program how a system works, AI \u2018learns\u2019 these patterns<\/a> from vast datasets, enabling it to perform tasks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While AI programs are being \u201ctrained\u201d and fed huge sums of data over several weeks and months, data processors run 24\/7. Once up to speed, an AI can use 33 times<\/a> more energy to complete a function than traditional software. <\/p>\n\n

\n \"A\n
\n Data centre energy usage has exploded to keep up with the growth of AI.<\/span>\n Dil_Ranathunga\/Shutterstock<\/a><\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\n

In fact, a single query to an AI-powered chatbot can consume ten times<\/a> as much energy as a traditional Google search according to Gordon Noble and Fiona Berry, sustainability researchers at the University of Technology Sydney. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cThis enormous demand for energy translates into surges in carbon emissions and water use, and may place further stress on electricity grids already strained by climate change,\u201d they say.<\/p>\n\n

Data centres are thirsty as well as power-hungry<\/a>: millions of litres of water have to be pumped to keep them cool. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These enormous server warehouses are vying with people for an increasing share of power and water, a situation which could prove deadly during a heatwave or drought.<\/p>\n\n

A dubious solution<\/h2>\n\n

Experts only have a partial picture of AI\u2019s resource diet, Noble and Berry argue. One survey<\/a> showed that just 5% of sustainability professionals in Australia believed data centre operators provided detailed information about their environmental impact.<\/p>\n\n

Its fierce appetite aside, AI is feted as a Swiss army knife of fixes<\/a> for our ailing planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI\u2019s ability to process mountains of data means it could spot the warning signs of a building storm or flood and track how the environment is changing say Ehsan Noroozinejad and Seyedali Mirjalili, AI experts at Western Sydney University and Torrens University Australia respectively.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cFor example, it can reportedly measure changes in icebergs 10,000 times faster than a human can,\u201d they add.<\/p>\n\n

Kirk Chang and Alina Vaduva, management experts at the University of East London, highlight hopes that AI might make simulations of Earth\u2019s climate more accurate<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI could closely monitor an entire electricity grid and coordinate generators so that they waste less energy while meeting demand. AI models could identify materials for sorting in a recycling facility and analyse air pollution to pinpoint its sources. On farms, AI systems could track weather and soil conditions to ensure crops receive only as much water as they need. <\/p>\n\n

However, AI\u2019s claims to efficiency are sadly undermined by a well-worn problem. When humanity makes an activity more efficient through innovation, the energy or resource savings are generally ploughed into expanding that activity or others.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cThe convenience of an autonomous vehicle may increase people\u2019s travel and in a worst-case scenario, double the amount of energy used for transport<\/a>,\u201d says Felippa Amanta, a PhD candidate in digital technologies and climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And while there is value in imagining what AI might help us do, it is important to recognise what it is already doing. An investigation<\/a> by Scientific American found AI was deployed in oil extraction in 2019 to substantially increase production. Elsewhere, targeted advertising that uses AI creates demand for material goods. More mass-produced stuff, more emissions.<\/p>\n\n

Does our answer to climate change need to be high-tech? <\/p>\n\n

During a climate disaster like Hurricane Helene, which claimed more than 150<\/a> lives in the south-eastern US over the weekend, a reliable power supply is often the first thing to go. AI can be of little help in these circumstances. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Low-tech solutions to life\u2019s problems<\/a> are generally more resilient and low carbon. Indeed, most of them \u2013 like fruit walls<\/a>, that used renewable energy to grow Mediterranean produce in England as early as the Middle Ages \u2013 have been around for a very long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u2018Low-tech\u2019 does not mean a return to medieval ways of living. But it does demand more discernment in our choice of technologies \u2013 and consideration of their disadvantages,\u201d says Chris McMahon, an engineering expert at the University of Bristol.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s more, low-tech solutions often focus on conviviality. This involves encouraging social connections, for example through communal music or dance, rather than fostering the hyper-individualism encouraged by resource-hungry digital devices.\u201d\"The<\/p>\n\n

Jack Marley<\/a>, Environment + Energy Editor, The Conversation<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jack Marley, The Conversation Artificial intelligence (AI) is curating your social media feed and giving you directions to…\n","protected":false},"author":759,"featured_media":12938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/7\/73\/Nicolas_P._Rougier%27s_rendering_of_the_human_brain.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,16],"tags":[334,120,173,474],"class_list":{"0":"post-12936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-earth","8":"category-tech","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-climate-change","11":"tag-global-warming","12":"tag-the-conversation","13":"cs-entry","14":"cs-video-wrap"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/759"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12936"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12937,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12936\/revisions\/12937"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}